About Face Theatre Archives

Will Wilhelm, a nonbinary person, stands on a stage filled with red velvet furniture. They are wearing a long red skirt and black top.

The Gender Play‘s the thing

by Kimzyn Campbell May 18, 2023May 18, 2023

All of the world is a stage, and Will Wilhelm knows it. Their new production at About Face (cocreated and directed by Erin Murray), Gender Play, or what you Will, is the perfect platform for them to explore their gender journey while also expressing their more dramatic side via monologuing with a side of dissertation. […]

An Arab American family at a kitchen table. The daughter is standing on the left. The mother is seated in front of her, looking at a laptop and talking to her son, who is seated at the right. His head is resting in his hand and he looks worried.

Theater Review

Mosque4Mosque upends stereotypes

by Boutayna Chokrane November 23, 2022November 23, 2022

Mosque4Mosque is not a monolithic representation of the Arab American Muslim experience, and perhaps that’s exactly the point. Written by Omer Abbas Salem and directed by Sophiyaa Nayar, this charming production challenges all preconceived notions of a play about an Arab American Muslim family. In this sitcom-esque dramedy, Ibrahim (played by Salem) and his family […]

Agenda

Umamicue, Mosque4Mosque, concerts, dancing, and more

by Salem Collo-Julin and Kerry Reid November 21, 2022November 21, 2022

Already hungry for some hearty fare? Join Monday Night Foodball this evening as the “barbecue supergroup” Umamicue brings A Very Umamicue Friendsgiving to the Kedzie Inn (4100 N. Kedzie). Expect an array of flavors including wasabi turkey confit croquettes (who doesn’t love a croquette?) with five-spice cranberry sauce, courtesy of the “Asian stoner food” duo […]

A Black woman in a strapless top and layers of choker necklaces is center, holding a cocktail glass and smiling with her tongue out. Behind her is a white woman with white stripes of makeup on her face, looking frightened.

Arts & Culture

A Black perspective on the French Revolution

by Bridgette M. Redman June 23, 2022July 8, 2022

Sometimes to understand the present, we must look at the past. In 2017, playwright Terry Guest grappled with how America could elect someone so outwardly racist as Donald Trump. It shocked him into questioning what could be done about the rise of fascism in the U.S. “Do we protest? Does that work?” Guest asked himself. […]

Two Black men sit on stage, turned slight away from each other. The light is shadowy, with suggestions of tree limbs hanging overhead.

Theater Review

Southern spells

by Dan Jakes May 24, 2022May 24, 2022

A good play, suggests Tony Kushner in his 1995 anthology Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue, “should be overstuffed.” Memorably comparing well-constructed theater to lasagna, he writes that a work of theater “should have barely been rescued from the mess it might just as easily have been” and, at its best, “has a bursting […]

Three actors stand behind a bar. Small Pride flags are visible on the wall of bottles behind them.

Theater Review

Laced has echoes of Stonewall and Pulse

by Catey Sullivan March 31, 2022March 31, 2022

Sam Mueller’s Laced lives in the shadow of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting, but it is rooted in a club that preceded Pulse by several generations: Stonewall. Through Mueller’s monologue-dependent script, About Face Theatre creates a contemporary story that also gives voice to the history that helped forge it. In director Lexi Saunders’s raw, emotive […]

City Life

Jump into spring with these Chicagoland events

by Salem Collo-Julin, Kerry Reid and Micco Caporale March 18, 2022March 18, 2022

The spring equinox (the moment when the sun is exactly above the equator and day and night are of equal length) for this year starts at 10:33 AM on Sunday 3/20, and brings our chance to check out Chicagohenge (if you go to the Loop, you might see the sun framed by our skyscrapers). And […]

Photos of three artists associated with Laced at About Face: Sam Mueller, Collin Quinn Rice, and Mariah Copeland

Arts & Culture

Collective healing

by Adam M. Rhodes March 16, 2022March 16, 2022

Queer bars are more than just bars that happen to be queer. They can be a refuge, a meeting place, and, quite literally, a safe space. They’re also places where our history has been written: from the Stonewall riots to the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Sam Mueller’s latest production unpacks what happens when the safety and […]